


Frankincense, Myrrh, and Blood

by tredecaphobia



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-30
Updated: 2012-04-30
Packaged: 2017-11-04 14:38:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/394969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tredecaphobia/pseuds/tredecaphobia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were, admittedly, many things about Turkey that Greece had come to ardently hate, and one of them was certainly smell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Frankincense, Myrrh, and Blood

There were, admittedly, many things about Turkey that Greece had come to ardently hate, and one of them was certainly smell. The man didn’t smell bad (though there were times the man had smelled like a charnel house, and had hunted him through the depths of the palace before trapping him), a faint combination of frankincense, tobacco, and myrrh, but that it was attached to the man himself was what made it unbearable.

It was linked to all of his most intimate moments, of his suffering, of his small and private joys. It had been there, in the very beginning, when he had been very young, lying still and hoping, with the same sort of vagueness, that he would simply perish if he didn’t attend to himself, that the heat would claim him, or the cold, or that the cats would smother him, but more likely was the possibility he’d die the same way his mother had, through war, and this reasserted itself when a youth kicked through the palace doors (long since rotted, he hadn’t needed to; Herakles had been minorly upset, but didn’t have the energy to assert this) and swept him off the floor. His blade had been covered in blood, as well as his clothes and mask, but he seemed surprised at seeing Herakles, and couldn’t seem to bring himself to do violence against the child. Of course that changed (it always did) in time.

His slightest insurrections were quickly surmounted; his refusal linked with bodily pain, his active resistance with torture. And all of it pervaded with frankincense, myrrh, and blood, and it was a shame he inherently wore the same scents Greece’s article of faith used, because he couldn’t even attend church now without praying for the death of a man who surrounded him.

And, to even further complicate matters, it was intertwined to inextricably with his acts of kindness to the boy. It was there on comforting nights, when Greece was in too much pain to eat, and the Empire would prop him up between his legs and feed him (tenderly, even. “Take it slow. Liddle by liddle.” And bits of food would be introduced to his mouth, riddled with sores.), or hold him after a nightmare (“’ts okay, you don’ have ta tell me what it was about.” He would say, and remain a still presence, and Greece’s terror would eventually reside, to be replaced by something more intangible, but just as pungent).

And it was further linked with his development and growth as an individual and a country; there was virtually nothing about his childhood that wasn’t inclusively linked with Turkey; he was Greece’s first lover (but certainly not Turkey’s), and possessed him thoroughly. It was where he learned the art of lovemaking, and it was certainly Turkey who knew exactly what Greece liked, whereas no-one else in the world would quite so much after him. He never went out of his way to please the youth, but wasn’t entirely selfish. It was simply gratifying to see some pretty young thing writhing under you, out of their mind with pleasure.

Like today, when Turkey, in his usual, errant wanderings (“Miss the old days?” Herakles had asked once, and Annan could immediately tell what he meant; Annan would often be found traveling through his old empire states, without really knowing why or how. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have plenty of things to do these days.), found Greece sitting in a half-excavated ruin, using a pick to energetically remove generations of encrusted ash from a long-forgotten volcanic explosion.

At first, Herakles hadn’t known he was there (the uninhibited motion of the swing of his shoulders was obvious, with the torque of his waist), before feeling the smell before recognizing it, and turning. And Sadik, at first, simply hadn’t known what to say; the brat’s face was as beautiful and impassive as ever (god did he remind Sadik of his mother, sometimes), and the only way he knew how to deal with that was how he dealt with anything when he felt as if he were on uneasy ground.

“Hey, brat. Don’t you know you can get lung cancer doing that?” The kid didn’t say anything. He only stared. And then, when Sadik was about to turn and walk away, his skin crawling with humiliation, Herakles spoke.

“Why did you come?” Sadik shrugged languidly; the kid wasn’t really playing his game, but at least he was cooperating.

“Bug the shit outta you.”

“Then you didn’t need to.” Sadik shrugged again, this time with a wicked smile.

“I saw you with a girl earlier. Didn’t know you were old enough for that stuff.” There wasn’t even a beat before he realized what had left his mouth and he was looking for signs of hurt in the kid’s face. But Herakles, more immovable than ever, merely looked at him passively; he was exhausted, Sadik could tell, not willing to play games.

“You know that’s not true. Besides, it didn’t matter to you, did it?” Or maybe not. That stung, just a little. Though it was true; the first time he’d had Herakles naked, squalling, and crying was when the kid had been twelve. Granted, Sadik hadn’t been much older. Just bigger. So Sadik shrugged again, letting the insinuation to roll off his shoulders. For Herakles, the memory was wrapped in the curls and tendrils of the smell of the man; he couldn’t help himself but say it.

“Must be boring for you, doing it with all these people.” His smile gained the slight curl of cruelty, and something dark and monstrous seemed to cast its pall over them. “No-one gives it to you quite like I did, eh?” He knows it’s true (knows exactly what to do to get the kid to squall, to beg for him to stop and to want it all the same, to eventually come, shamefaced and loathing, in the end) but wondered why he had to say it. Him and his big fucking mouth.

Finally, Greece freezes, his body stiffening and his eyes narrowing; those days, those eight-o-clocks, all seemed suddenly closer than before, and the man’s hands on him, possessing him, were suddenly much more clear, and the bright, sunny day around them resembled nothing so much as a bedchamber, darkened with the guttering wicks of tallow candles. The man, grunting, whispering words of vile encouragement, his sweat dropping down on Herakles’ face, and overall, that scent of something vulgar and something divine. That instant, the ghost of an hour and a man, had been so sudden and so real that Herakles found his ability to respond robbed entirely from him.

And Sadik suddenly realized what effect he’d just had on the youth; he was trying to find a way to apologize (you just didn’t talk about these things today) without sounding as if he were scraping, when Greece turned, the fight out of him, away. “No. They never do.”

And Sadik could only stand there, an unpleasant little shock running through him, and stare at the youth while he continued his excavation. He didn’t know what to say, didn’t know what to do to patch this; he had expected a brawl, or at the very least, a verbal argument, and was going to say something, anything, when Greece stopped picking again and turned to regard him steadily.

“But then, they never get to, either. I’m never going back to those times. Ever.” And Sadik was stricken dumb for an entirely reason, now. He didn’t say any of the things he wanted to say, his throat obstructed with partial love, partial unnamable, unspeakable regret, and vindication. He could only reach out (in between swings with the pick, the kid was getting tired, now) and gently place a hand on the back of cinnamon curls, remembering a time when he had clenched them in his fist, and the child had cried into his ear.

He was too old, had seen too much, and so, perhaps, it was why he couldn’t fight when the man’s hand rested (deceptively gentle, for he, too remembered a time when that man had seized his hair, controlling him) on the swell of his skull. He hadn’t turned, because he hadn’t needed to; frankincense and myrrh drifted on the eddies of the Greek winds (and it was so strange, that there was only frankincense and myrrh, like hearing only notes of a song; your body ached to complete it, and so you sang along with it, but it was never the same), and the man turned him around to fully embrace him.

They stayed like that for an instant or an hour, for both times seemed similar, before Greece spoke into the fragile, pliant skin of Turkiye’s neck. “Thank you, Sahib.” And he had said that one word would have seemed as an attempt at friendship (Arabic was not Greece’s native language, and one had to allow for some inconsistencies, but he still did speak some, which made its usage more unusual), and it was promising and ominous, and there was nothing the man could do but hold on tighter, and try to destroy those eight-o-clocks.

**Author's Note:**

> Note: Sahib, to anyone who has watched an Indiana Jones movie, is probably pretty clichéd, but it was very much used at one point. Modernly, its known definition is “friend”, but there was a time it meant “owner” instead. Also, don’t use it today, cause it’s kind of unusual.
> 
> Also, the scents of frankinscence and myrrh are generally associated with Christian myth, but are actually linked closely with the Ottoman Empire. Whodda thunk?


End file.
